Sunday, June 11, 2017

Blade (1973)

One of those terrible
movies that’s redeemed by a few peripheral elements, Blade is a schlocky New York City thriller about an aging detective
assigned to investigate the murder of a high-profile politician’s daughter. The
plot is less than nothing, all grimy clichés, and co-writer/director Ernest
Pintoff’s storytelling is rotten, since the script bounces around wildly
between subplots, often without real transitions, while the dialogue runs the
gamut from bluntly expositional to hackneyed. (Nearly all the good lines sound
improvised.) What redeems the film, more or less, is a cavalcade of interesting
players. John Marley, the craggy character actor who received a career boost by
sharing an unforgettable scene with a horse’s head in The Godfather (1971), plays the leading role, so it’s novel to watch
him carry a picture, or at least try to. He delivers lines well, all suave
crankiness, and his mane of silver hair is a wonder to behold, but he’s hardly
the most intimidating figure, a tiny little man wearing sharp suits and dainty
neck scarves. The cast also features Keene Curtis, William Prince, Joe Santos,
and John Schuck, plus a trio of one-scene wonders appearing early in their
careers: Morgan Freeman, Steve Landesberg, Rue McClanahan. There’s even room
for Ted Lange, later to become the bartender on The Love Boat. Simply for the pleasure of seeing so many proficient
people work, Blade is—well,
“fascinating” is pushing it, so let’s just say enjoyable.

Also helping the
picture achieve baseline watchability is a robust score by Jack Cacavas. Sort
of. For whatever reason, he composed only three or four music cues, primarily
the suspenseful string-driven piece that functions as the main theme, so the
film repurposes the same cues over and over again. This creates a weird effect,
as does sloppy picture editing. One final attribute worth mentioning is the
extensive location photography; while none would ever choose Blade over the average Sidney Lumet
movie of the same era for tasting the local flavor of ’70s Manhattan, a sense
of place is always welcome. And if nothing else, Blade has a priceless throwaway scene. Landesberg plays a porno
director who bombards a clueless actress with copious details about character and
motivation, then blithely asks, “Do you understand what I’m saying so far?”
Sensing her bewilderment, he inquires further: “You went to Vassar? Radcliffe?”
Likely wasted on the audience for which Blade
was intended, that’s about as dry a bitchy remark as you’ll ever encounter in a movie.